Conan Kudo

More accurate to say that Cincinnati Bell is selling its wireless operations to Verizon.  

It's not selling the wireless operations. It'll get a lease back on the spectrum and shut down the network before handing control of the licenses back to Verizon.

Acid rain

LTEiRA participants cannot participate in the Sprint program due to exclusivity clauses in the deal. And C Spire Wireless does not offer/sell service in Georgia. It does, however, sell and operate service in Memphis, Mobile, and Pensacola.

They have plenty of time. They have to reband first. And we know how long that takes .

It doesn't matter if they want to reband or not. There isn't enough room to actually reband to Band 8, not without eliminating the 915MHz ISM band. And I seriously doubt that would be allowed.

But EWA want to use it for LTE, not CDMA. So the question should be if it became a subclass of Band 8 or not. I don't for a moment belive there are 2MHz of LMR users on that band.

 

Per Morgan O'Brien (of Nextel fame), narrowband users should move to broadband. I foresee that to be true. I don't think that the LMR industry can be sustained any longer. There is not enough money in it to sustain a business. Eventually even public safety will have to move to VoLTE. It might take them a little while, but it will happen. The faster they start planning, the better. The more they get involved in the standards process, the better. The days of custom networks are numbered.

Subclasses don't exist in 3GPP. You either fit in a band or you don't. If you don't, you need a new band. The problem is that they need a new band. That's going to make things hard.

Is the 700 as valuable as tmo people make it sound? Sometimes I think it might be a mistake for tmo when considering the issues that come with it. I would think sprint would keep 25/2600 but I believe dish (assuming they start up) would want some of that and vzw/att would be pushing real hard to make sprint give some of that up as well as aws.

The issues are no worse than what Sprint has had to put up with. At least in T-Mobile's case, it knows that there's light at the end of the tunnel in the next three years. Sprint doesn't have any such assurance with SMR rebanding, unfortunately.

Band class 10 does include SMR 900 MHz, too.  But it is a subclass that, to my knowledge, has not been implemented in any infrastructure or user equipment.  In other words, nothing in the field currently is compatible with band class 10 CDMA1X 900.

 

AJ

Subclasses don't have to use the same duplex gap, or really anything, do they?

Yes but it does fall within the GSM 900MHz band. Sprint should still lease the rest of the spectrum out from the spectrum holders and provide service at advantageous rates to holders of the spectrum.

 

While they're at it, they might want to talk to Solinc about swapping spectrum for service.

Duplex gap is wrong. The Cellular 900 band has a 45MHz duplex gap (just like Cellular 850). The band is merely shifted up because Europe couldn't release the Cellular 850 band when GSM launched in 1989.

"One unpaired 5 MHz block (1695-1700 MHz) and one unpaired 10 MHz block (1700-1710 MHz), licensed in Economic Area (EA) geographies."

 

What is it next to?

The 1695-1710 MHz block is next to AWS-1 1710-1755 MHz uplink spectrum. It can't be used for downlink CA effectively. Maybe uplink CA. But there are some murmurs of pairing it with 2095-2110MHz to extend the AWS band even further.

1695-1710 / 2095-2110 + 1755-1780 / 2155-2180 would extend the AWS band by a total of  2x40MHz. The total AWS band would effectively be 2x85MHz, the largest FDD paired band used globally. If Dish has its way, the 3GPP could even wind up authorizing the creation of a band that covers 1695-1800 / 2095-2200 MHz just so that Dish's AWS-4 band would be usable within a single band class (intra-band CA). Such a band would be by far the largest FDD band authorized for cellular network use, at 2x105MHz.

Am I the only one who thinks Tmo can upgrade backhaul to all its EDGE/GPRS sites in 2014?  I don't think Tmo will care if it is fiber to each of these sites.  They may even install bundled copper at many of them.  A lot of rural and low capacity sites could do just fine with bundled copper or a long daisy chain of microwave.  

 

If a rural EDGE site started running 4-6Mbps of LTE per sector instead of 100kbps connected to T1's, that would be a major triumph.  Sprint should consider something like that to their GMO's where fiber is going to be a long time coming.

 

If Tmo rushes out something to all these EDGE sites and then just organically over time upgrade them to fiber also, that wouldn't be a bad deployment strategy.  I would not be shocked if Tmo pulls this off.  All it takes is money and proper management.  I also would avoid CenturyLink and Windstream like the Plague.

 

Robert

I think you and I are the only ones who think it is possible. What a lot of people don't get is that most "rural" and "suburban" areas typically have a lot of dark or underutilized fiber that is ready to be used, usually along highways, state roads, public buildings, and schools.

And if the fiber isn't readily available, alternatives in the form of bonding multiple T3 lines, using coax backhaul, or microwave to a fiber node are all options available for T-Mobile to utilize while it waits for the fiber to reach the cell site.

You might be the only one because I disagree.  If backhaul constrained, T-Mobile should -- after years and years of neglect -- deploy W-CDMA to those sites.  W-CDMA has greater utility than LTE.  If T-Mobile does otherwise, then the celebrated magentan leadership is either stupid or just pandering to the LTE-penis crowd.

 

AJ

WCDMA is included, A.J. You know very well that T-Mobile is deploying SingleRAN gear that supports GSM, UMTS (HSPA+), and LTE. They're only talking up LTE because that's what everyone is interested in. And while I agree that it is a long time coming, you're being intentionally oblivious about how T-Mobile has been modernizing.

T-Mobile's upgrade comes down to these points:

• Full "rip-and-replace" SingleRAN (multi-mode, multi-band) modernization (just like Sprint!)
• Elimination of overlay networks for unified SingleRAN networks
• Backhaul upgrades to fiber by any means necessary
• If fiber isn't available immediately, other backhaul solutions are used in the mid-term

Of course, Neal Gompa thinks that T-Mobile can get this done in record time.  I am still not buying it.

 

http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/178517-t-mobiles-lte-will-cover-250-million-people-in-2014-everywhere-in-the-us-by-2015

 

AJ

Of course I do. I know how it would be done, and I've talked to a few people about it, and they've confirmed it is definitely doable. 

A.J, you know that I live in Mississippi, a state that is widely known as the poorest in the union. Despite that, Mississippi is known to have the best state roads/freeways, and highways in the country, and has no less than six fiber backbone systems running through the entire state, and several places are getting a seventh one.

Do you know how easy it is to build infrastructure here? It's incredibly easy. There's little to no red tape, there's a lot of support from local governments (even if they can't contribute monetarily), and there's certainly plenty of cell sites to co-locate on. And if a new site needs to be built? Only an informal request to survey for siting is generally required, especially if it's on top of an existing structure. I won't say it is cheap, but it is rather painless compared to California, New York, Ohio, and other places.

Mississippi is not unique. This is generally true in >86% of T-Mobile's 2G only footprint. That does make the lack of UMTS more galling, but it also means that it should be possible to get it done relatively efficiently with the sheer amount of resources T-Mobile is pushing into it ($4.6 billion, large numbers of teams, etc.).

This is also why Sprint has been rolling out to the small towns first. It's quick, easy, and generally the clusters are smaller. Sprint's problem, though, is that it isn't willing to pressure its backhaul and infrastructure providers to meet and surpass goals. The company allows delay after delay from provides like CenturyLink and Windstream instead of replacing them after the first couple of problems from them, and accepts poor quality work from Ericsson without complaint. T-Mobile has never allowed such tomfoolery with its suppliers. Sprint needs to change this, ASAP.

So the Sprint hotspots like the Netgear Zing doesn't support CA?

Sadly, no. It would have been awesome if Sprint released the first TDD CA device, but it hasn't yet...

25+26 CA would be useful in more rural areas where B41 doesn't make sense quite yet, partially due to lack of density (which beamforming probably won't resolve). There will be plenty of areas within range of a single B25 carrier and a single B26 carrier, so CA would be quite handy, particularly with the new Netgear router that Sprint's launching now (assuming it supports CA). Gives the same effective 10x10 of spectrum that VZW uses for HomeFusion, so Sprint won't lag speed-wise in areas where B41 won't be for awhile.

 

As probably noted already, the AT&T Unite hotspot supports CA. So that's where Big Blue is starting in Chi-town.

Only one of them does, the Unite Pro. The regular Unite does not.

5.       pCell works in any band, not just mobile and not just licensed. We can't comment on our carrier relationships, but we are working in more than the one licensed band referenced in this discussion group. And, we also are working in unlicensed spectrum. As it turns out, we ended up using 3 bands, 1 UHF, 2 microwave (can't say precisely which, because it would identify the partner that owns the spectrum) across the demos in the various videos and Columbia, just because what was set up when we had a window to shoot and/or where we had a license to do the demo (licenses are location-specific). We work in unlicensed spectrum (compatibly with LTE in 900MHz, which is unlicensed in the Americas), and also have done extensive testing in HF for ionospheric pCell up to about 45 miles away, but traveling 300 miles up and back from the ionosphere. pCell tech works great at even such long distances, and it also verifies that pCell size remains the same regardless of distance (it's proportional to wavelength). So, the range is really only limited by the MRC  of the power of the pWave radios reaching the user.

 

I might be being nitpicky here, but this confusion about the 900MHz band is something that annoys me. Why do you think that the Eurasian 900MHz band is unlicensed in the Americas? Or that LTE devices can operate on that band?

The US "900MHz band" is 26MHz wide at 902-928MHz. It's unpaired, and jam packed with stuff from cordless telephones to specialty modems for D2D communications. More accurately, its official designation is the "915MHz band." And outside of the US and Canada, you can't use it anymore. Mexico allows it in some places, but most of Latin America has reallocated to the 900MHz cellular band, which is a paired band. The 900MHz cellular band is 2x35MHz wide at 880-915 / 925-960 MHz. The only reason this band exists is because Europe couldn't release the 850MHz band when it developed and launched GSM (ISM services in Europe operate in a variable length 868MHz band spanning from either 863-870 MHz or 865-870 MHz, depending on the country).

So what happened here? Did Sprint purchase these customers, and then the next day turn around and sell them back to USCC? Unlikely, since that would also likely require approval from the FCC. No, what seems more likely is that someone who hastily wrote that PR goofed. This reminds me of all the PR's re Sprint Spark that talk about "combining" all 3 frequencies, when we know Spark really only means B41 TDD LTE, and there are naturally no plans for inter-frequency carrier aggregation. 

 

Bottom line, whatever the exact contours of this deal, it seems unreasonable to state that Sprint "churned" out these customers, when they never used the Sprint network (except for roaming), nor touched a Sprint device, unless they proactively chose to do so.

According to the Public Interest Statement that Sprint and US Cellular submitted to the FCC:

The proposed transaction involves the partitioning and assignment of three 1.9 GHz PCS licenses from U.S. Cellular to Sprint, covering all or parts of 31 Cellular Market Areas (“CMAs”), along with the sale of 585,000 U.S. Cellular customers located in these areas, in exchange for $480 million and the assumption of certain liabilities. U.S. Cellular and Sprint are committed to providing a smooth transition of these customers to Sprint following Commission approval of the license assignments and transaction closing.(6)

The footnote referenced says the following:

U.S. Cellular customers transitioning to Sprint will enjoy the wide range of Sprint service and device offerings – including marquee devices like the iPhone and iPad, Sprint’s acclaimed push-to-talk (“PTT”) devices and services, and Sprint’s award-winning customer support. Customers will experience no service disruption in this transition as the parties will enter into a spectrum lease arrangement by which U.S. Cellular will continue to operate its 1.9 GHz PCS Network in the affected areas post-closing until Sprint and U.S. Cellular can seamlessly transition the former U.S. Cellular customers. The parties expect this process to take approximately one year.

That is exactly what happened. So Sprint absolutely "owned" those subscribers. And it churned them out. It's listed as such in its financials as well.

It would have been unwise for Sprint not to allow USCC customers to leave since they did not offer the same coverage areas. If they had inherited the USCC network and coverages, they could have made a different play.

 

Sprint could have done more to incentivize and keep those customers. However, if the demographics weren't there, they may just have figured it was better to let many of them leave than to try to "buy" them.

 

Sprint may have been seeing this as a spectrum only transaction, and any customers gained was just gravy. Their actions sure seem to support that.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

That makes sense. Given Sprint's troubles, though, I would have figured it would have tried harder to retain these customers...

It's sort of a moot point now, but Sprint never acquired any USCC customers- that was a common error made by the media. The sale in the Midwest last year was purely a spectrum transfer. If customers had been acquired, Sprint would have taken over their contracts and likely have had to honor their terms until they expired. USCC phones would have worked for everything but LTE and 1x800, which Chicago-area USCC customers lacked anyway.

 

Instead, USCC customers were released from their contracts (no ETFs) and free to choose any other provider they wished. If they failed to do so, their account was eventually terminated, rather than automatically transferred to Sprint. That is why there was more "churn" from them than one may otherwise expect.

Uhh, no. It was Sprint's choice to release them from their contracts. USCC did transfer the customers to Sprint. It was even in the press release.

Dark Mark 

Happy pill

Coffee bean

Oreo cookies

President's Day was yesterday. Bidding was suspended, and we're moving into 9 rounds per day, starting today.

The definition appears vague (the FCC has only revoked licenses for lack of substantial service on rare occasions). That said, I'd look to the footprints of the affiliate market PCS buildouts to get a sense of what Sprint accepted as a bare minimum at the time; granted, the affiliates probably went beyond "substantial service" to address competitive issues, but they still tended to build out a lot less coverage than Sprint's first-party markets did. One time when I was looking around I did find some maps that Sprint had sent the FCC to validate it had provided substantial service in various markets, including POPs estimates; they're probably in the FCC database somewhere.

 

Similarly, Sprint also has some obligation to operate service on ESMR in at least some of the areas where Nextel provided coverage but Sprint no longer has coverage, or risk losing the licenses.

 

EDIT: Here's an example of the maps I was discussing. Hopefully the link works...

The definition is intentionally vague, because it is impossible to define what is considered "substantial" service when you are intentionally not defining what specific technology you are using. Sure you could use some form of "user" benchmarks (like guaranteed network performance levels within the license area), but those are woozy and not likely to hold up because they don't address the fundamental matter of "covering" people in terms of an RF license. Population percentages would work, except the FCC has a lot of trouble enforcing that requirement on virtually all licenses that have such a requirement.

Instead, the FCC allows the individual RF license operator to make a case for defining their work as "substantial service", and it is approved on a case-by-case basis.

Nintendo World

The new chairman of Sprint Corp. recently and bluntly challenged the leadership capabilities of the nation’s third largest wireless carrier.

 

“This is why I sometimes yell at Sprint executives,” the Tokyo businessman told an Asian publication. He said Sprint’s advertising was “not cost effective. This made me quite angry.” And he added, “Sprint has gotten used to being a loser.”

 

Ouch.

 

Some local public relations officials told The Star that Son shouldn’t have been so open.

 

 

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2014/02/13/4821972/a-public-challenge-to-improve.html#storylink=cpy

In Japan, shame is an extremely effective means of getting something done. He may be employing this tactic to see if it'll work.

I am glad that wasn't the case here where I live. I had the choice of two cable providers here at my house in South Dakota. WOW and Midcontinent. First time in my life I've ever had two cable providers available at my house. I usually only had one...and sometimes none.

 

And the result is I was able to get 100Mbps/15Mbps cable internet for slightly less than I paid for Windstream DSL 12Mbps/768kbps back in New Mexico. And my cable internet runs 90%-100% of stated speeds always, but my old DSL was less than 50% most of the time.

 

I also got all the install and modem fees waived when I threatened to use the other cable provider. Competition is a wonderful thing.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

And that is exactly what the 1996 Telecommunications Act was supposed to create. The problem was, most of the "competitive cable franchises" went bankrupt within five to eight years of launch. And you can guess where they went...

RCN and WOW! are the remaining "competitive cable franchises" of a short-lived bygone era...